Nike's power laces coming in 2015, just in time for Marty McFly

Ever since Marty McFly travelled to the far-future year of 2015 in Back to the Future Part II, we've been waiting for the technology seen in the film to come to pass.

Okay, we might not be scooting around on hoverboards, or settling down to watch Jaws 19 in glorious Holomax – but Marty's self-lacing Nike MAGs always seemed at least somewhat feasible… right?

Now it looks like they're a step closer to reality; on Friday, Nike designer Tinker Hatfield – the man behind the Back to the Future Part II shoes – spoke to attendees at New Orleans' Jordan Brand's Flight Lab space, saying, "Are we gonna see power laces in 2015? To that, I say yes!"

In the 1989 film, the self-lacing effect was realised by having a stagehand under a fake floor pulling the laces tight – but Nike applied for a patent for a self-lacing shoe all the way back in 2010, suggesting that it's been working on the technology for a while.

In 2008, Nike launched the Back to the Future-inspired Hyperdunk McFly shoes, while in 2011, it released 1500 screen-accurate Nike MAG replicas – minus the self-lacing mechanism – to raise money for the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson's disease research.

Nike has yet to confirm whether the self-lacing technology will be used in a new Back to the Future replica shoe, or in an all-new pair of kicks – but given the timing, it seems like a safe bet that we could be stepping into Marty McFly's MAGs in 2015. Mattel had better get cracking on that hoverboard…